Have you sold your soul for dirt? And what have you sold your body for?
Have you given away what you are for what you can get? Have you traded
off your body for your soul or your soul for your body? Or have you gone
on taking both with you on equal terms? You may think you have profited
when you have lost. You may believe you are a victor when you are
defeated. I have no quarrel with the earth. But dirt can never take the
place of a man. Nor can a man's living ever take the place of a man's
life. What a man does may be successful. And what a man is may be a
failure. Any one thing in the place of any other thing is a failure. If
we want a man goods wont do. If we want love money wont do. If we want
faith comfort wont do. If we want beauty falsehood wont do. You are all
talking about making your way. Making your way to what? It all depends
on that. To what? A man may make his way. He may cut a tremendous
figure. He may outpace everyone and invite envy and admiration. He may
do all that and still be dead. And then he may do all that is the
opposite of that. He may be the most lamented man in his crowd. He may
do and be all that and still be alive. It's always harder to know what
to do with too much than with too little. I readily get used to
reverses. But I can never quite accommodate myself to a triumph. When
things go against me I always have myself left in my own favor. But when
things go for me I always have myself asking me questions I cant answer.
My body and my soul are imperative. I cant make light of their demands.
Let me sell them out: then what happens? Dirt begets dirt. Reach outside
yourself for something that is only to be found inside yourself: then
what happens? Every grain of sand that gets where it dont belong
interrupts the revolution of the planets. Down the sunbeam dances the
anarchic atom. Have you sold your soul for dirt? Sold your soul for
something not itself? Sold your soul to the alien? I do not accuse you.
I ask you a question. I do not say you do wrong. I ask you why you do
not do right. I do not say you are outside the fold. I invite you inside
the fold. I have no wish to make you a good man or a bad man. I want you
to come into what you were born for. I want you to step out of the way
of the universe and to step into the way of yourself. Do not confuse my
values. I am no despiser of the body. I am no enemy of markets. You may
sell your soul for dirt. Sell sermons as easily as sell goods. I see the
best in the house of Man and the worst in the house of God. I do not
charge. I persuade. I build no fires to burn anybody up. I only build
fires to light the way. Have you betrayed yourself with thirty pieces of
silver? Have you sold yourself? Have you permitted yourself to be sold?
Are you exposed for sale on the bargain counters? You are consigned to
yourself in trust. Have you betrayed your trust? The world is consigned
to itself in trust. Has it betrayed its trust? Have you sold your soul
for dirt? You may have bought souls. That means that you have sold your
soul for dirt. You have no right to buy or sell. As long as buying and
selling lasts you cant help selling your soul for dirt. Nothing can
purify the way as long as one man exacts toll of another man. Everything
should be everywhere. Everybody should help himself. We live in the age
of bought and sold. We are about to pass into the age of help yourself.
I ask you who walk the streets: Have you sold your soul for dirt? I ask
the world of all which includes the world of one: Have you sold your
soul for dirt? Have you sold your soul for manners, forms, titles,
incomes, prestige, position? for anything you put into your belly or on
your back? for anything which makes you superior to anybody else? for
anything which puts the way you do a thing above what you are doing? for
anything in laws or economics or books or arts which serves as a weapon
with which to club the innocent? for anything over ground or under, any
sneaking device of profit, which subjects others to your advancement?
Have you sold your soul for dirt?
You have sold your soul for dirt. You have conformed. You have said one
and two make four after all the rest. You suspected that one and two
make three. But you did not like to say so. You have obeyed the thing
around you rather than the thing in you. Votes, interests, profits,
privileges, stand for you in place of the soul. You surrender to a job.
You are enslaved to something that was made yesterday. You have sold
your soul for dirt. You can only buy it back with soul. The time will
come when we will sell our dirt for soul. I know what it means to try
that now. It means poverty and banishment. The devil take the hindmost,
they say. The devil will. Or the god will. When you see all the poor.
When you see all those who rob and are robbed. When you see the
devastation the profit system leaves in its wake. When you see all the
confusions of sex. When you see prostitution. Then you know that
something has been sold for dirt. What has been sold. Our civilization.
You and I. The man you sell has not been sold. The man who sells has
been sold. The victim of per cents has not been sold. The victor has
been sold. The hand that draws the knife is the murdered as well as the
murderer. Your genius may be your dirt. The thing you do best. The
possession you are most proud of. The public applause. Your friends.
Your family. Your heredity. They may be your dirt. Even if you sell
yourself for your best loved you sell yourself for dirt. Love can do no
harm. But lovers may sell love for dirt. Anything that's in the way of
the spirit is dirt. You make goods. But if your goods are slave goods
they are dirt. You have no right to make your talent a club with which
to batter down the inefficient. You say every man should be paid
according to his talent. I say that's exactly what they should not be
paid according to. A man's talent may be his best weapon of injustice.
Talent is the coward's weapon. You may be born a king. You may be born a
genius. It's as bad to use a crown of brains as to use a crown of gold
to exploit the humble. Using what you were born with to such an end is
the final cowardice. We use laws. We use forms. We use social position.
Anything within reach. It's the blow in the dark. It's the lie on the
lip. It's the giant taking advantage of the pigmy. You see a little
farther. That is your dirt. Your arm is a little longer. You hear a
little more. You move a little quicker. That is your dirt. All the
inequities come by such a route. All the gloating palaces and the
snarling huts. All the laughing luxuries and the weeping wants. They
come by that route. My best suit of clothes. It comes that way. Less and
more comes by that process. Do you pride yourself on your faculty?
Rather do anything else. Even your faculty may be a tyrant
toll-gatherer. Down every mountain steep tumble your horrified
inferiors. Time and space recognize no large and small, no above and
below, no served and servant. A man has a little better or a little
worse thinking machine. But better or worse are not to time and space
what they are to words. Evil begins when man begins. Tyranny begins when
one man has more heartbeats than another man. When dirt gets on top.
Brains are a whip. You use that whip over others. You make that whip
into statutes, mandates, wage-scales. You make everything else second to
it. You may have got so far that you are horrified when a man makes a
dollar an agent of oppression. You have still to go on till you are
horrified when a man makes his talent an agent of oppression. The king
sits on a throne. The picture hangs in the gallery. The book is on the
shelf of the library. The music is sung in the great hall. The play goes
on in the theater. The game is won or lost in the vast stadium. Do they
circumscribe us? Or do they free us? Are they burdens to carry? Or are
they wings to fly with? Are they for the pleasure of a few? Or are they
for the joy of all? Money may free. Brains may enslave. Money may be the
gentle savior. Brains may be the brutal damner of bodies and souls. You
have sold your soul for dirt if you have used it for the production of
anything but soul. Whether in the market or in the academy. Whether in
play or work. Whether in the midst of your family or abroad in the
crowd. You have sold your soul for dirt. Whether in making money or
staying poor. Whether in the most exquisite beauty of an art or the most
hideous ugliness of a brothel. You have sold your soul for dirt. Babies
at the breasts of mothers are sold for dirt. Fathers who have cared for
children are sold for dirt. Poems, laces, anything, may be sold for
dirt. Anything that gets in the way of life. That is sold for dirt.
Religion, churches, policies of states and industries, are sold for
dirt. Sex. Idealism. The marriage bed. Dreams. They are sold for dirt.
Souls are the dearest things in a cheap world. The house you live in.
The cup of water you hand to the famished. Benefaction. Hospitals for
disease. The very kindnesses of social rectitude. The excuse-mes and
thank-yous of the polite and the amiable. The bowings and scrapings of
parlors. They are sold for dirt. Nothing can pay for souls but souls.
But you take dirt in pay for souls. Every time you get in the way of
life you accept dirt as a settlement for souls. The nights of dalliance.
The hours of love. The perfumed bower. The groves of arcadian ecstasy.
They are sold for dirt. All. All. You have sold your soul for dirt.
Have you sold your soul for dirt? Have you given up that which is
priceless for a price? Have you ripped off your wings and asked: What's
the use of flying? Have you postponed next year? Have you said: I'd like
to be myself but cant? Or have you said: It's all very well to talk?
Have you always been putting yourself off? Saying: To-morrow will do for
me? That to-morrow after all the to-morrows that never comes? Have you
planned to sell your body for fifty years and then live beyond bargain
and sale? Or your soul? The cry comes to you out of your own deeps. It
wears no disguise. It's you yourself asking questions of yourself. Have
you sold your soul for dirt? In every act of injustice you sell
yourself. When you turn your back on some body. When you steal a man's
wages and call it profit. When you make it harder for some one to live
in order to make it easier for yourself to live. When you call white
black and up down. When you become respectable at some one else's
expense. When you put the show of good manners above the fact of bad
heart. Then you have sold yourself for dirt. When you corner anything.
Even virtue. When you corner pictures or books or curios. When you
corner ideas. When you jealously corner your dreams. When you eat too
much while others eat too little. When you dedicate any of the sources
of life to anything but the common privilege. Then you have sold your
soul for dirt. If your love stops with your family. If you can love your
own children and not love the children of others. If you hog anything in
flesh or spirit. You have sold your soul for dirt. You have called upon
all men to listen. You are for sale. Come here. Listen. Here's a man for
sale. What will you give for him? He is for sale cheap. For he can be
paid for in the basest coin. He can be bought for the dirt under your
bootsole. You can buy him for a house or bonds or goods in a store or
things made in a factory. You can buy him for a crop off a farm. You can
buy him for the clothes he wears and the food he puts into his belly. He
ought to be dear beyond anyone's ability to buy him. But almost anybody
can buy him. He puts such a mean price on himself. He will bargain
himself off for almost anything that will furnish his keep. Have you met
that man? Do you know his name? Can you give me his initials? Does he
live round the corner? Or maybe in your own house? Or do you wake up
nights and say to yourself: He's in this bed? Maybe you tell me he's as
good as he can be under the circumstances. I dont see why any man should
expect to be a man under the circumstances. Light is not darkness under
the circumstances. Death is not life under the circumstances. Right is
not wrong under the circumstances. Every man has to adjust the
circumstances to himself. Dont tell me a man always has to adjust
himself to the circumstances. A man's circumstance is his dirt. I am too
familiar with your underlying assets to assent to this overlying result.
Do I expect you to fight? Am I asking too much? Yes, fight. No: I am
only asking enough. I see nothing preposterous in asking a man to be
what he is. In asking beauty to be beautiful. In asking a song to sing.
In asking gentleness to be gentle. In asking generosity to give. In
asking the cloud to rain. In asking water to run down hill. In asking
the fulfilment of life. What do I ask you for? For the fulfilment of
life--that's all. I decline to call your wars and your exploitations and
your greeds the fulfilment of life. They are rather the fulfilment of
death. I decline to call the barbarism we call civilization the
fulfilment of life. I decline to call the love we call marriage the
fulfilment of life. I decline to call the pride we call art. Or the
austerity we call science. Or the hypocrisy we call religion. I decline
to call them the fulfilment of life. They are the fulfilment of death. I
decline to call the hells the fulfilment of life. The hells of theology.
The hells of profit and loss. The hells of owners and owned. The hells
of poor and rich. The hells of those who have everything and those who
have nothing. The hells of those who make everything the writ of the tax
gatherer. I decline to call them the fulfilment of life. They are the
fulfilment of death. I acknowledge your institutions. I do not dismiss
property. I put dreams and people above all the lauded majesty of
learning and possessions. No man is so little but his head is higher
than your Oxfords and Harvards. No man is so degraded but he outshines
the luster of bonds and trade. You say a man must make a living. I say
no. That is already made for him here or somewhere. What a man must make
is life. To make a living leaves us dirt still. To make life gives us
wings. We want everybody to get out of the way of life. The world. The
crowd. You. I. We must get out of the way of life. If the superman gets
in the way of the underman he is in the way of life. He has sold his
soul for dirt. Would I destroy civilization? Yes--if I could help
civilization by doing so. Have you sold your soul for dirt? Have you
traded down instead of up? I am pulling down the monuments. The great
men. The masters. The leaders and superiors. The geniuses and the
marvels. I shake them down in a common ruin. In order to rebuild
greatness. In order to bring out of all what so far has been all brought
out of some. I turn all values upside down. I turn all ideals and
instrumentalities upside down. In order that man may come up. Now man is
below all the rest. Then all the rest will be below man. Now the soul is
the means and what it produces the end. Then what is produced will be
the means. The soul will be the end. I would demolish everything if
necessary to save everything. Have you sold your soul for dirt?
And then I hear your voice raised above all the uncertainties of
itself: your voice: it sings:
Comrades: we must hold together: if we let go of each other for
an instant the stars will drop out of the sky,
The power of the heart is resistless if it lifts with an infinite
hope,
The power of the eye is unmeasured if it looks with endless
expectation:
And then I hear your voice offer everything, withdraw nothing:
for cause or not for cause:
You do not question us: you love us: you do not doubt us: you
love us:
You do not bring scales to see what we weigh: you bring love to
see what we live.